AI Hallucination Cases

Story can be found here.

(Motion for sanctions available here.)

"The court’s focus here is not the misuse of artificial intelligence to conduct unreliable legal research and drafting. It is the inexcusable submission of false authority and factual arguments to the court, the subsequent misrepresentations about the extent of the improper conduct, and the failure to take prompt responsibility for errors once discovered. The obligations on officers of the court at issue here precede by centuries the age of electronic research and artificial intelligence.

The failures to meet those obligations do serious damage to the respect for the legal profession, and they merit sanctions. The most serious sanctionable conduct consists of actions taken after the attorneys had time to consider the consequences of submitting false statements of law and facts to the court, and had time to discover and disclose the full extent of the errors in citations and in factual assertions.

[...]

Artificial Intelligence is not the cause of bad legal practice. Lawyers performed their obligations well and performed their obligations poorly before Al, before electronic research platforms, before on-line publication of case law, and before the development of the West Key Number System or Shepard’s indexes.

Submission of false legal citations and demonstrably false factual claims pose a grave threat to the judicial branch. People are skeptical of institutions, and the legal profession is not exempt. We are duty-bound to attend to the integrity the courts so that close scrutiny reveals a model of honesty, accountability, and truth-seeking.

The authority of the courts relies on public confidence that rulings are just and are grounded in the law, not on the whims of judges. “[A] lawyer should further the public’s understanding of and confidence in the rule of law and the justice system because legal institutions in a constitutional democracy depend on popular participation and support to maintain their authority.” (IRPC Preamble, par. 6) Officers of the court cannot become comfortable with careless or deliberate misrepresentation of facts or the law."

Underlying report & Recommendations can be found here.

Order to Show Cause is here.

"We disagree with respondent, however, that dismissing the appeal is an appropriate sanction for Farivar’s conduct. Our inherent authority to impose this sanction “should be exercised only in extreme situations, such as where the conduct was clear and deliberate and no lesser sanction would remedy the situation.” (Crawford v. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. (2015) 242 Cal.App.4th 1265, 1271.) We conclude that we can sufficiently address the prejudice to the parties and the court from [Counsel]’s sanctionable conduct and sufficiently achieve the deterrent purpose of sanctions (see, e.g., Code Civ. Proc., § 128.7, subds. (b)(2), (c) & (h)) by doing the following:

First, [Counsel] shall pay sanctions in the amount of $7,500 to the clerk of this court within 30 days after the remittitur is filed. We calculate this amount based on, inter alia: (1) the significant amount of time this court spent verifying the fabricated citations in the opening brief, and (2) that Farivar refused to accept responsibility for his conduct, instead characterizing the fabricated quotations and citations as mere “clerical citation errors” and continuing to misrepresent legal authority in his opposition to the sanctions motion.

Second, we strike appellant’s opening brief and require appellant to file, within 10 days of the issuance of this order,a corrected opening brief. Appellant’s corrected brief may differ from the version originally filed only to the extent it corrects or omits the fabricated citations and quotations in the original version. Appellant shall file and serve both a final version of the new brief as well as a redline version.

Finally, because we conclude attorney Farivar has violated a Rule of Professional Conduct, we are required to “take appropriate corrective action.” (Cal. Code Jud. Ethics,canon 3D(2).) In line with this obligation, we direct the clerk of the court to serve a copy of this order on the State Bar.

We acknowledge and have considered that, as appellant argues, the majority of the fabricated quotes in the opening brief do not appear to be misrepresentations that work to appellant’s advantage; that is, the brief does not represent the law to be more favorable to appellant’s arguments than it actually is.

Nonetheless, we must consider broader concerns about the integrity of the courts and the legal profession. Inaccurate citations in briefing—whether the result of technological hallucinations or human failure to verify—may be relied on in court decisions, “circulated, believed, and become ‘fact’ and ‘law’ in some minds. We all must guard against those instances. . . . ‘There is no room in our court system for the submission of fake,10hallucinated case citations, facts, or law. . . . ’ [Citation.]” (Noland, supra, 114 Cal.App.5th at pp. 448-449.)"

"No puede soslayarse, como hecho de gravedad institucional, que la defensa técnica del imputado - en el momento procesal que constituye la última instancia de revisión extraordinaria local- haya presentado un escrito elaborado posiblemente mediante el uso de herramientas de inteligencia artificial, u obtenidos a través de medios no confiables y fidedignos sin ejercer el más mínimo control sobre la veracidad de las citas jurisprudenciales, la autenticidad de las fuentes invocadas ni la coherencia dogmática de los fundamentos empleados.

La conducta descripta trasciende el mero error material o descuido profesional: configura un supuesto de negligencia grave incompatible con los deberes de probidad, lealtad y diligencia que rigen la funcióndel abogado defensor.

La defensa penal no puede convertirse en unespacio de experimentación de medios y/o tecnologías de manera irresponsable que - aunque de utilidad potencial - requieren un manejo prudente, crítico y siempre supervisado por el criterio humano. El ejercicio de la defensa en juicio, protegido por el art. 18 de la Constitución Nacional y por los instrumentos internacionales con jerarquía constitucional, exige una intervención personal, reflexiva y fundada de quien ejerce la representación técnica. El uso automático y acrítico de un asistente artificial, o la utilización de fuentes con procedencia desconocida para producir un escrito en la instancia recursiva vulnera no solo el deber de diligencia, sino también el derecho del imputado a una defensa real y efectiva."

"[134] Même si l’arbitre de griefs est un tribunal administratif moins formel que le sont laCour supérieure ou les autres tribunaux judiciaires, notamment parce que ses règles depreuve sont plus souples, il n’en demeure pas moins que c’est un tribunal. À l’évidence,le procureur qui, devant ce tribunal, s’appuie sur de la jurisprudence doit s’assurer qu’elleexiste.

[135] L’arbitre de griefs s’attend à ce que tous les procureurs qui plaident devant luisoient compétents, honnêtes, professionnels et respectueux de son autorité.Manifestement, celui qui soumet au tribunal des références jurisprudentielles inexistantesne satisfait pas ces attentes, car il induit, intentionnellement ou non, le tribunal et la partieadverse en erreur.

[136] Qui plus est, le procureur qui fait référence à de la jurisprudence qui n’existe pasrallonge inutilement l’arbitrage. On reproche déjà, souvent avec raison, la longueur etles coûts élevés associés à l’arbitrage de griefs. Ces problèmes seront exacerbés si lesinformations inexactes générées par les hallucinations d’outils d’intelligence artificielles’introduisent devant les tribunaux d’arbitrage en raison de la négligence des procureurs.Le présent cas en est un bon exemple.

[137] Enfin, le procureur qui fait référence à de la jurisprudence inexistante expose lapartie qu’il représente à devoir compenser les dommages que cela pourrait causer àl’autre partie.

[138] En définitive, référer à des décisions qui n’existent pas, comme l’a fait laprocureure patronale dans le présent dossier, est un geste répréhensible qui ne devraitjamais se produire en arbitrage de griefs. Ce comportement est d’autant plus grave quecette procureure est membre de l’Ordre des conseillers en ressources humaines agréés."

[Entry kep in the database for archiving purposes]

It later surfaced that the whole issue might have been human error: see subsequent order.

Show Cause Order here. Law firm explained what happened here.

In the ultimate order, the court noted that "In terms of competence, the threat to attorneys using generative artificial intelligence platforms powered by large language models is two-fold. First, danger exists that the attorney does not understand how the technology functions, believing that the output is real instead of “realistic-looking."."

In finding that the law firm acted with integrity, the Court noted with approval that it had repaid the other side's fees, to the tune of 55,721.2 USD.

Order to Show Cause is here.

"The danger of Attorney Stich’s AI use is especially felt here because his opponent’s pro se status meant that there was not an adversary capable of calling the attention of the court to the phony citations. Furthermore, this court expended time and resources in investigating the hallucinated citations, resources that could have been better spent adjudicating the merits of this underlying litigation and that of other cases pending before this court.

The oversight in submitting fake citations is more than just sloppy lawyering: it imperils the integrity of our judicial process.However, the court also acknowledges that our society sits on the precipice of rapid technological development and that the continued development of AI will fundamentally alter life as we know it. Just as the advent of the Internet in the late 20th century transformed the legal profession, and particularly legal research, so too will artificial intelligence. Indeed, the two biggest legal research databases, Westlaw and LexisNexis, have developed and continue to expand their own proprietary AI tools to assist legal practitioners in finding case law.2 This Order should not be construed as a Luddite attack on technology and the efficiency it brings to the legal profession. Rather, this Order is an acknowledgement that AI remains a nascent technology with questionable reliability at this juncture. Given the ethical obligations lawyers must honor, it is imperative that lawyers use AI with diligence and care. This technology is too unsophisticated and must necessarily yield to a lawyer’s obligation of candor to the court."

From the Order to Show Cause (available here): "One week after filing its second motion for summary judgment, Liberty Mutual submitted a notice of errata identifying the erroneous Goodman and Chaudri citations and demonstrating legitimate citations to those cases. [ECF No. 50].3 While the Court acknowledges Liberty Mutual’s prompt notice disclosing the two most serious errors in its filing, the additional misquotations and mischaracterizations discussed above will not be disregarded. Liberty Mutual indicates that the errors were typographical and/or caused by vision impairment, but that explanation is simply not credible. The errors in Liberty Mutual’s filing are not ones in which a few letters or numbers were passed over or shuffled. Rather, the filing includes entire names, dates, court designations, and Westlaw citations that are completely off base, and various other inaccuracies cannot be explained by typographical or vision issues. Therefore, the Court will reserve its ruling on the motion for sanctions and will set a hearing requiring Liberty Mutual to show cause why it should not be sanctioned."

Later on, the court accepted Counsel's technical audit that suggested the errors stemmed from a human, non-AI source.

Fine was 3,000 USD, to which the court added 25,000 USD in costs in a subsequent order.